UNDER THE BED!!

Yep, I actually got under the bed.  Thankfully, there were no monsters.

So, you know how it is, when you're looking for something and can't quite remember where you put it?  I had one of those moments, this morning.  I was searching around for this thing and I suddenly thought: "Aha!  I BET it's under my bed!"

Now, I'll level with you.  I'm a pretty tidy, relatively organised person.  But under my bed is what I can only describe as a war zone of clutter.  Seriously, if ever my room looks particularly neat, it's generally because anything that could make the place look messy has been shoved under the bed and forgotten about.  So, venturing under that thing is a serious case of not knowing what you might find.

Because sharing is caring, I figured why not take you guys with me on my bold mission?!

The first thing I realised I have a lot of under my bed, was dust.

Like... Health hazard levels of dust.  I'm asthmatic and believe me, had I realised just how much dust there was under there, I'd have nuked my room.  Or... You know, cleaned under the bed a lot more thoroughly than I obviously have been.  The shame.  It burns.

The horror.  Dear GOD, the horror.

Thankfully, once I'd wiped and scrubbed and brushed the dust away (and essentially bathed in antibacterial gel for at least ten minutes), I could get on with the job in hand.  The serious job of LOOKING FOR THE THING.

I have a big, floral chest under my bed (ironically, to provide storage to ensure against clutter...Ha, that one worked well), so my first thought was that what I was looking for was probably in that.

So, I opened the floral chest and discovered that what was actually inside it, was...

MY ENTIRE TEENAGE YEARS.

For some reason, best known only to myself (except I can't really tell you), I've been hoarding all the 911 posters I used to have on my bedroom walls as a hormonal super-fan (side note, I have a YouTube channel and I recently uploaded a video about unacceptable fan behaviour and it's quite funny, so go watch it!).  I have rarely felt as ancient as when I noted the presence of so many singles bought on cassette tape.  Downloads schmoundloads...

But the thing I wanted wasn't in there, so my mission continued.  And pretty soon, I realised that those 911/Take That cassettes weren't the only ones lurking under my bed.  Far from it.

My music taste has always been... Eclectic.

Who here remembers Alisha's Attic?!  How amazing was Alisha Rules The World?!  Damn, I need to go YouTube that immediately.  I mean... Immediately after I finish this.

So, by this point, I had established that beneath my bed was not only the dustiest place in the freaking world, but also serves as some kind of time capsule to media gone by.  It therefore shouldn't have been a surprise, when I also discovered this:

Ah, the joys of having to rewind a tape back to the beginning...

Because teenage Emma was clearly not as obsessively organised as adult Emma is thought she was before going under her bed, hardly any of those blank VHS tapes are labelled.  And seeing as I have no way of playing them, we can only guess at what kind of stuff I might have thought was so important, that I needed to own it forever.  Top Of The Pops?  Home movies?  WE MAY NEVER GET THE ANSWERS WE NEED.

Thankfully, outdated multimedia is not the only thing I keep under my bed.  Oh, no.  Like all perfectly normal adults, I also have a dressing up box.  And, until I opened it to film my aforementioned YouTube video the other day, I had literally no idea just how many wigs I have.

Spoiler: it's a lot.

Crammed into this tiny box, I found tutus, a devil tail, Where's Wally glasses & hat, mouse ears and all sorts of other dressing-up goodies.  In fact, it turns out that I have so much of this stuff, that it has spilled out into the central region of "Under The Bed Land," where you'll find hats of all descriptions, cheerleading pom-poms and various random props.

I own this stuff because I am a grown up and if I want to play dress-up, I flipping well will.

And I frequently do.

I won't lie to you, guys.  It was at this  point that the trip beneath the bed took a turn for the unexpectedly weird.  

For example, I used to have an enormous keyboard under there (of the musical variety; I'm not just so small that I need giant computer equipment), which I moved to the garage during a clear-out a year or so ago, because it was taking up so much space.

And yet, for some bizarre reason, I kept the music stand that slots into the top of said keyboard under my bed, lying there utterly useless.  Sitting proudly on said stand, is the very music book my piano teacher and I would go through when I was a kid having piano lessons.  I was about ten years old, back then.  And the book is still there on the stand.  My dedication to practising the piano is either a marvel to behold or not worth mentioning.  I can't decide which.

I can still play certain songs by memory, though.  YAY ME!

I then came across a box, which I thought might contain something exciting, like old photos, a winning lottery ticket or a portal to a mystic dimension.  But no.  It contained the scariest pile of wires I've seen in a long while and I have literally no clue what any of them do, or what they're supposed to connect to.

PUT THEM AWAY, EMMA.

For all I know, I could have the parts to build my very own TARDIS under my bed, just gathering dust next to my two Cleopatra singles (don't judge my teenage life choices), but I am a technophobe and it's safe to say that this box got shoved back under the bed very quickly...

And what should be right next to that box of wires?

Makes sense.

Don't we all have a random bread bin, under our beds?!  

But the most random thing I found, whilst crawling around in a most inelegant fashion, was a large, brown folder.  It said something about a hospital on the front and was dated September 1st, 1998.  I would have been ten days away from my 16th birthday.  How intriguing!  What could this possibly be?  Maybe I was about to discover that I have superpowers, due to some kind of secret testing that I've had all memories of erased?!

Well... Not quite.

My hips don't lie.

The hilarious thing is that as soon as I saw this X-ray of my hips (one is slightly dislocated; it's why I can't do the splits - or that's the excuse I use, anyway), I vividly remembered it being taken in the first place.  I saw a doctor called Alex.  He was newly trained and in his twenties.  I basically fell in love with him and as he manipulated my legs, to check how my dislocated hip was affecting my movement, I nearly blurted out: "YOU ARE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CREATURE I HAVE EVER SEEN."

He had black, emo-ish hair, big eyes and a very cute smile.

My "type" hasn't changed much, has it?!

I did not find Phil under my bed.  Colour me disappointed.

By the time I crawled out from under the bed, I had completely forgotten what it was that I had been looking for in the first place.  But it turns out that an unexpected trip down memory lane is always a nice way to spend a morning, even if it does include scary wires, random images of bones and a whole heap of dust.

Dear God, the dust.

I'm off to clean...